


Yellow

by Muftiday



Category: The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
Genre: Gen, Metaphors, Vague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 21:16:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9787295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muftiday/pseuds/Muftiday
Summary: The soldiers called her an angel, and I cannot find it in myself to disagree--Death encounters a nurse in a war. It goes about how you'd expect





	

**Author's Note:**

> another english assignment considered good enough to post  
> prompt was to explore a character from the book thief further in a piece of writing. death as a character always fascinated and captivated me more than anything in the novel, so i chose him and his maybe something of a relationship with doctors, especially those in war, constantly at odds with death 24/7  
> holla

The day that she died, the sky was yellow.  
I understand that this is a broad statement. Many people die and there are many skies. Any number of people have died and will die, and they will die with almost yellow skies, tinged yellow skies, yellow and red skies, many, many skies. But hers was yellow.

She was a nurse.  
It was a war.  
She did her job.  
She died.  
It was nothing new, not to anyone, and certainly not to me. I waded knee deep in red and her soul sifted through my fingers like sunshine through clouds. It was not the first time I had seen her. But it was the last.

Despite prior belief, I do not hold the medicinal community in spite. I rather enjoy being 'beaten at my own game', as it were. I admire their tenacity.  
I also pity it.  
She had snatched thirty seven souls from my fingers. She weaved cloth out of her hands and stitched miracles into their wounds. Her love was pure sanitized white stained with red, but unyielding. She smiled at men and her words were anesthetic to their pains. I stood behind her and watched her work. I saw her soul shining through her eyelids. Quiet comforting mingled with anguished screams. She sliced off poison limbs with little more than whiskey and a scalpel, popped bones into their places with steady hands of stone, always there, always cold, but always comforting. Many times I had seen her stuff men's souls back into their broken skulls and screeching mouths.  
The soldiers called her an angel, and I cannot find it in myself to disagree. 

They do not teach how to see me in medical school. Regardless, I find that those medicinally inclined tend to inexplicably sense my presence. She was no exception. No sooner would I arrive only to see her stiffen and work twice as fast. Desperately clinging to a soul that was already mine. Her soul leaked out through her tears.  
She stole thirty seven souls from me, and gave me seventeen.  
Despite humanity's greatest efforts, they cannot delay me forever.

When I took her soul, the battle had ended several hours prior. I was not looking for her. I was looking for her patient. They were curled into each other among the wreckage of what had been barracks. Her head was bleeding. The patient was missing a leg. I stood over them and watched as both their souls scrabbled in their heads. My arms were full with souls and I felt them call out in lingering desire to live. She was binding her patient's leg, a red stump spilling it's red life over the rubble. There was no surviving that. The patient knew it. I knew it.  
Evidently no one had told her. 

She swayed, her eyes flickering shut and open in a desperate gesture. Her fingers curled in red, fumbling with strands of white. I have no way of knowing if she would have lived if she had not wasted energy saving the patient. Despite what humans believe, I do not know who I will take when I get somewhere. I simply take whoever comes to me. I will admit that she surprised me. My fingers were dipped into the patient's eye sockets, their soul reaching up to meet me when she looked at me. Of course, hundreds have looked at me, but never really at me. More through me.  
But she saw me.  
And she stopped me.  
I don't know what she did. All I know is that one second my fingers were soaking in the patient's soul, and the next I was jerked out. The patient had passed out, soul securely burrowed in his skull. Hers was leaking out of her eyes. 

She lay down next to the patient, clasping their hand in red stained fingers. Her soul left her in a soft exhale, and she rose up to meet me. I made room in my arms for her. I felt her soul linger on the patient as we left. We walked through the red fields into a yellow sky.  
And I felt her smile.


End file.
